Wooden utility poles and/or telephone poles are often over forty feet tall and must therefore be set in a deep hole in the ground for stability. Typically, such utility poles are set at least six feet in the ground. Of course, the hole is much larger in diameter than the pole and therefore, dirt must be returned to the hole around the pole little by little and must be tamped or compacted tightly around the pole to provide vertical stability.
To ease the job of tamping the dirt tightly, hydraulic pole tampers are commonly used. The tool is often used by utility crews to back fill a hole after installing a new power pole or by farmers for tamping fill material around new fence posts.
The hydraulic pole tampers come in sizes from 60″ to 85″ in length. The tamper is a longitudinal tool with two hydraulic hoses connected to the top end, a hydraulic impact unit housed in a long thin body, and a ram head at the bottom. The driving fluid may be air or oil depending upon the application. In some applications an electric motor driven tamper may be used for tamping. However, in the instant application, the driving fluid is hydraulic oil supplied by a reservoir on a vehicle such as a truck which usually includes a hydraulic oil fluid driven derrick or other drilling equipment for setting posts in holes. Without driving fluid and the hoses, the tool weights often weight nearly 30 pounds.